New traffic law inconsistent with the Rule of Law

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The illegalities of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (AARTO) Amendment Bill are too numerous to analyse in the space of one article. Suffice it to say that the Bill embodies the very arbitrariness against which the constitutional drafters sought to protect South Africans when they included the provision for the supremacy of the Constitution and the Rule of Law rather than that of politicians and their whims in section 1 of our highest law.

South Africa's recent swing back to paternalistic authoritarianism is deeply concerning: expropriation without compensation, threats of disarming law-abiding citizens, raids on investigative journalists who expose corruption, internet censorship and an impending criminalisation of 18 to 21-year-old drinkers. Now we are threatened with a traffic law that seeks to oust the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts of law and replace them with an "administrative" process under a state bureaucracy that will almost certainly violate due process and individual rights.